Vol. 6, No. 2.

ISSN: 1473-8376
www.heacademy.ac.uk/hlst/resources/johlste

ACADEMIC PAPER

Service Quality in Higher Education: The Experience

of Overseas Students
Maria Pereda (deceased)
David Airey (d.airey@surrey.ac.uk) and Marion Bennett (m.bennett@surrey.ac.uk)
Faculty of Management and Law, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH
DOI:10.3794/johlste.62.160
Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education

Abstract
The higher education of students has become increasingly internationalised, with an evergrowing proportion of students originating from overseas. However, research to date
suggests that overseas students are often less satisfied with their courses than other
students. Consequently, there is a burgeoning need for universities to understand what
students value in their university experience. This paper reports on a study that establishes
and tests dimensions for measuring service quality in higher education, focusing on full-feepaying postgraduate students from non-EU countries at one institution in the UK. The
institution concerned has a particular reputation in tourism and hospitality and a significant
proportion of the respondents were studying these subjects. Adopting Lehtinen and
Lehtinens 1991 framework, a Q-sort was undertaken followed by factor analysis. The results
of the research highlighted four factors of service quality: recognition; quality of instruction
and interaction with faculty; sufficiency of resources; and aspects of physical quality.
Arguably, the most significant finding here is the importance that these students attach to
their institutions reputation.
Maria Pereda died in May 2006 shortly after completing her PhD thesis. The degree was
awarded posthumously. A native of Venezuela, Maria graduated from Venezuela Central
University and held an appointment at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. She completed
her MSc at the University of Surrey in 2000, focusing on tourism and hospitality education.
This paper is based on her PhD research.
David Airey is Professor of Tourism Management and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University
of Surrey. He has spent 30 years involved in tourism education in various capacities: with
government, with the European Commission and with universities. He is co-editor, with John
Tribe, of the recently published International Handbook of Tourism Education.
Marion Bennett is Associate Lecturer in Tourism and Marketing at the University of Surrey.
She has held lecturer positions since 1991 with the Universities of Strathclyde and Surrey,
where her interests have focused on information technology and marketing in relation to
tourism distribution, heritage and air transport.

Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
Overseas Students
Keywords: Service quality; Higher education; International students

Introduction
The education of full-fee-paying international students has become of major importance for
universities in Western nations, particularly in major English speaking destination countries.
Barron (2005: 353) has suggested that international education is one of Australias largest
industries and that the fees generated by international students are important to the
budgetary health of institutions. In the UK, according to HESA (2006) and UKCOSA (2004),
about 320,000 or 13 per cent of students in 2004-2005 came from overseas, with about 10
per cent from outside the European Union (EU). This figure more than doubled from about
160,000 in 1994-1995. For some institutions, international students currently represent more
than 25 per cent of their student population (UKCOSA, 2006). The main countries of domicile
of international students in the UK are China (32,000 or 12 per cent) and Greece (9 per
cent), with at least a further 20 countries each providing more than 2,500 students. As far as
tourism is concerned, equivalent total figures (UCAS, 2006) suggest that overseas students
represent about 16 per cent of acceptances onto programmes, rising from 11 per cent in
1996. Clearly this level of enrolment has represented a major opportunity for institutions,
particularly at a time when public funding for higher education has been constrained; but it
has also presented challenges. Barron (2005: 355) has pointed to the extent to which most
universities have designated international departments responsible for marketing and
recruitment, but goes on to highlight the need to ensure that such students are properly
supported after arrival, providing evidence to suggest that this does not always happen,
leading to frustration and disappointment. A recent report by the Higher Education Policy
Institute (Bekhradnia et al., 2006) confirms this, suggesting that non-EU overseas
respondents were considerably less satisfied than others with the value for money received
on their course.
Against this background, it is clearly important for universities to understand what students
value in their university experience, including those from overseas. It has been common
practice for many years for higher education institutions to provide opportunities for students
to evaluate their learning and teaching experience, typically in the form of end-of-semester or
end-of-course evaluations. Many institutions also gain feedback from students about services
such as the library or computing. A recent addition to these information sources in the UK
has been the National Student Survey (NSS), which focuses on learning and teaching
experiences. However, surveys of the overall experience or overall quality have been more
rare (Aldridge and Rowley, 1998).
This paper reports on a study (Pereda, 2006) that was designed to establish and test
dimensions for measuring service quality in higher education, with specific reference to
students following postgraduate taught programmes for master degrees, over one year, from
countries outside the EU. Many of these were following programmes in tourism and
hospitality. Specifically, the study aimed to identify from the literature three dimensions of
service quality (physical, interactive and corporative), which were then validated with a Qsort. This provided the basis for a survey of 330 students at one institution in the UK,
designed to measure their views of the quality of service received. This provides insights into
the items that students value in their educational experience at this institution. It also
provides a basis for redefining the dimensions of service quality.

Service quality for international students

The migration of international students is by no means a new phenomenon. Schachner
(1962: 25), for example, refers to the students in medieval times who poured in an
increasing flood to the centres where they could literally sit at the feet of the great teachers
and absorb wisdom. To some extent, the search for knowledge remains an important driver
for international movement in education today, but, in other ways, motives, influences and
indeed origin and destination countries have changed radically. During the most recent and
biggest expansion of international education, the USA, UK and Australia have become the
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Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
Overseas Students
main destination countries and the countries of South East Asia have joined those of Europe
as large providers of students. The search for knowledge has been joined by a range of other
factors in driving this growth. These include: the marketing campaigns of receiver
universities; the perceived value of a foreign degree in terms of employment enhancement or
snob value; the absence of sufficient university places at home; government policy in
relation to student fees; and more extraneous factors such as opportunities for emigration
(Pereda, 2006). As far as individual institutions are concerned, Allen and Higgins (1994),
from a study of 82 institutions in the UK, report that the most important factors for
international students when selecting a university were academic reputation, course content
and entry requirements. But perhaps the biggest change, driven in part by the need for
Western universities to maintain numbers of international students, particularly where these
pay full tuition fees, has been the recognition of such students as an important market that
needs to be satisfied in an increasingly competitive world. Wright and ONeill (2002), for
example, point to the extent to which an assessment of students perspectives has become a
crucial requirement if universities are to remain competitive. More than 20 years ago, Glisan
(1984) highlighted the special interest in overseas students, while Mortimer (1997)
emphasised the need to examine and understand the decision-making process undertaken
by these students and for institutions to respond to their needs.
To this extent, universities have become increasingly involved in defining service quality and
measuring customer satisfaction in ways that are familiar to service marketing specialists
(Gronroos, 1984; Kotler, 1985), who themselves were developing measures of service
quality from the 1980s. As noted by Patterson et al. (1998) and Conant et al. (1985), the
most important customers, namely students and their parents, and the university providers
have progressively changed towards a customer service orientation. Against this
background, there has been a rapid expansion in the literature about this aspect of service
quality. However, the way in which it has typically developed by identifying the attributes
from consultation with the students and then evaluating these (Bourke, 1997; Gatfield et al.,
1999; Joseph, 1998; Thompson and Thompson, 1996) has meant that there has been a
great diversity and lack of consistency in methodological strategies and in the variables
employed to assess the service quality (Leonard et al., 2003). Some researchers in
education have used SERVQUAL, which is the most popular model to measure service
quality, sometimes specifically adapted for the education sector (Wright and O'Neill, 2002;
Gatfield, 2000). Orr (2000) identified five groups of organisational determinants of success in
the provision of fee-paying graduate courses. Pate (1993) split the literature on student
satisfaction into three perspectives: psychological-wellness-type satisfaction (related to
personal characteristics); job-type satisfaction (related to future aspirations); and consumertype satisfaction (related to daily experience). However, the general picture is of a profusion
and indeed a confusion of measured variables, some replicated across different studies,
others unique to a particular study.
In an initial attempt to understand the underlying patterns of service quality variables from
these previous studies in higher education, a framework proposed by Lehtinen and Lehtinen
(1991) was used. The framework was considered to offer a useful preliminary way to
structure information relating to education as a service. Lehtinen and Lehtinen separately
identified three dimensions of service quality: the physical quality (both products and
support); the interactive quality (interaction between consumer and service provider); and the
corporative quality (the image). Using these three dimensions, some 24 studies specifically
related to quality in higher education were reviewed to establish whether these dimensions
could be identified from the variables considered in earlier studies of higher education. For a
dimension to exist it had to be included in more than three studies (Ekinci and Riley, 2001).
The results and the studies are given in Table 1. From this it is clear that the physical quality
dimension (general services, teaching and learning facilities, accommodation) and the
interactive quality dimension (academic instruction, guidance, interaction with staff and
students) are well included in the existing studies. The corporative quality dimension

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Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
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(recognition, reputation, value for money) is also present, but is less fully covered and mainly
appears in papers concerned with marketing orientation (Bourke, 1995; Wilkinson, 1993).

Study (author year)

Physical quality

Interactive quality

Mavondo et al., 2004

Wiers-Jenssen, 2003

Corporative quality

Wright and O'Neill, 2002

Elliot and Shin, 2002

Wiers-Jenssen et al., 2002

Clemes et al., 2001

Gatfield, 2000

Oldfield and Baron, 2000

Gatfield et al., 1999

Ford et al., 1999

Patterson et al., 1998

Joseph, 1998

Aldridge and Rowley, 1998

Athiyaman, 1997

Bourke, 1997

Tomkovick et al., 1996

Soutar and McNeil, 1996

Rogers and Smith, 1993

Hampton, 1993

Lapidus and Brown, 1993

Stewart, 1991

Ortinau et al., 1989

Polcyn, 1986

X
X
X
X
X

22
22
8
Table 1: Higher Education Evaluation Matrix
Physical quality general services, teaching and learning facilities, accommodation
Interactive quality academic instruction, guidance, interaction with staff and students
Corporative quality recognition, reputation, value for money

This study focused specifically on students from non-EU countries following postgraduate
taught programmes. The fact that they are both international and postgraduate identifies
them as a particular segment of the student market, and, as noted, it is one that has been
showing significant growth and fee-earning potential. In many ways, their needs and
responses are similar to those of other students but in significant ways they are also
different. For example, as international students, the 2004 study by UKCOSA (2004)
indicated that both postgraduates and undergraduates showed high levels of satisfaction with
their academic experience (87 per cent), although, at 91 per cent, the undergraduates were
rather more positive than their postgraduate counterparts at 85 per cent. This broad similarity
is reflected in the other items included in the UKCOSA survey, with a notable exception that,
at 85 per cent, undergraduates were more likely than postgraduates (65 per cent) to be
offered university housing at the beginning of their stay. Other differences identified in the
literature (Pereda, 2006) are that postgraduates are likely already to have been exposed to
academic life, are older, with more work experience and experience of living independently.
International students have similar issues to their domestic counterparts but additionally they
face some specific issues, the most commonly cited being knowledge of English, inadequate
financial resources, social adjustment, problems of daily living, loneliness and homesickness
(Kennedy, 1995; Wilkinson, 1993; Burns, 1991; Samuelowicz, 1987). These, combined with
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Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
Overseas Students
the fact that they, or their families, are normally paying full fees, may partly explain the extent
to which they are more critical of their experience and more demanding (Pereda, 2006). The
study by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Bekhradnia et al., 2006) relating to English
universities showed that nearly 30 per cent of such students found their courses represented
poor value for money compared with 15 per cent of home and EU students. The fact that this
study relates to this particular segment provides information about an important group, but
the extent to which the results can be related to all international students or to students in
general needs to be tempered by these differences.

Methodology
Having reached a point of identifying from the literature the ingredients of and preliminary
structure for service quality in higher education, the research strategy was developed to
identify statements and dimensions that would capture the students experiences of service
quality and to measure these at a particular institution with a large cohort of international
students. The students included in the survey were all from non-EU countries taking taught
master degree courses, typically over one year, in different aspects of management.
Admittedly, this approach contains limitations, being confined to particular students studying
a particular group of courses at one institution. The advantage of this approach was partly
one of convenience and logistics, but also that it permitted the identification of a sufficiently
large and coherent group of students with roughly similar experiences, hence avoiding
differences between institutions, subjects, ages and experience.
The institution concerned is based in the South of England and achieved university status in
the 1960s. It has a strong research reputation as well as strong links with the world of work.
Specifically for this study it has a long-standing and strong international reputation for
hospitality and tourism education. It regularly ranks as one of the leading centres both for
teaching and research in these areas, and is one of only two institutions in the UK accredited
by the UN World Tourism Organisation. It has a developing reputation for other management
programmes, with recent accreditations by the American body, the Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Association of MBAs (AMBA), placing it
among leading business schools. For more than 20 years it has attracted a large number of
international students, and currently more than 90 per cent of its postgraduate students in
management are from outside the UK. A dedicated international office provides specific
support for these international students.
The fieldwork was organised into two main parts. First, a Q-sort was used to establish the
validity of the three dimensions and to establish statements related to the dimensions. A
selection of these statements was then used both to explore the response of international
students to their experience and to conduct an exploratory factor analysis, which ultimately
identified four factors of service quality.
Q-technique has its origins in the work of Stephenson (1935; 1953) and provides researchers
with a systematic and orderly means for identifying the dimensions of subjective phenomena
from the viewpoints and experiences of individuals. In brief, it attempts to convert subjective
responses into measurable dimensions, which can then be formally evaluated by statistical
applications. To this extent it is a preliminary method. It makes the study of human
subjectivity amenable to objective analysis, hence combining the strengths of both
quantitative and qualitative research (Sexton et al., 1998). This versatile procedure is well
suited to cases where the existence of concepts has not been established (Ekinci and Riley,
2001). The evaluation of students experiences comes into this category and was used here
as a first step. Stergiou (2004) had earlier, and for similar reasons, followed this approach in
relation to students views about teaching.
The Q-sort was carried out in two phases. In the first phase, a bank of statements was
created to represent the dimensions suggested by Lehtinen and Lehtinen (1991). The initial
set of statements was generated from previous questionnaires in the area of higher

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Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
Overseas Students
education, including unpublished dissertations (Leonard et al., 2003), as well as from
discussions with researchers in related areas. An initial pilot test was conducted with five
subjects in order to check the instructions and any wording problems with the statements that
were generated. For the first Q-sort, a total of 104 statements were used, related to physical
quality (34 statements), interactive quality (38 statements) and corporative quality (32
statements). Respondents for the study were confined to students enrolled in a postgraduate
programme at the researchers university for at least one semester. The experience in the
university is a basic requirement to evaluate the service. The Q-sort was completed by a total
of 30 students from 28 different countries, including two from the UK, six from other EU
countries and 22 from other parts of the world. These students were asked to sort the
statements, which had been printed onto separate cards, into the three dimensions and then,
for each group of statements, to classify them into: most important (the kind of service you
would expect to have); least important; and not relevant. In order to qualify, a statement
needed to be allocated to the same heading by at least 60 per cent of the sample (Ekinci and
Riley, 2001; Hinkin and Schriesheim, 1989) and a minimum of four qualified statements was
required to validate the existence of a dimension. The result of this Q-sort was a set of 85
validated statements distributed as follows: physical quality 38; interactive quality 29;
corporative quality 18.
For the second Q-sort, in order to have a better balanced representation among the three
dimensions, the best 20 statements that obtained a degree of consensus of 70 per cent or
more were used for the first two dimensions, physical quality and interactive quality.
However, further adjustments were also made both to avoid omitting likely determinants of
student satisfaction for example, library services and to remove statements that
essentially had the same meaning. For corporative quality, which only achieved 18 validated
statements, three of which did not reach the cut-off of 70 per cent, five new statements were
added. Hence, the second Q-sort took place with 60 statements, 20 related to each
dimension. The respondents for this second round were 30 non-British full-fee-paying
students enrolled on PhD (12) and master (18) degree programmes in different departments
of the university. They were asked to sort the cards in the same way as in the first Q-sort.
The output from this round was a set of 59 validated statements. One item was rejected from
corporative quality.
The second stage of the study involved further exploration of the statements to establish how
they impacted on student views of the quality of service provided and how well they
confirmed the existence of the three dimensions. For this, a research instrument was
implemented with students taking taught postgraduate master level programmes at the
institution. The final response was from 330 students taking a range of programmes in
management and related areas. Eighty-four of these were on programmes related to
hospitality and tourism, although it should be noted that this underestimates such students
because a number of them identified themselves as studying management, omitting to
mention their particular specialism. All were overseas students paying full fees. The research
instrument was distributed personally in spring 2005, in most cases at the end of classes,
and self-completed in the researchers presence. Forty statements in total were used from
the second Q-sort to measure student views of the quality of service. Fifteen of these related
to physical quality, 11 to interactive quality and 14 to corporative quality. The statements are
given in Table 2.
Physical quality

Mean

SD

The gardens and open areas on the campus are kept clean

5.22

1.17

Students rooms are provided with adequate internet connections

5.14

1.90

The classrooms have up-to-date teaching support equipment

5.10

1.05

The university has modern computers with the latest programmes

5.06

1.30

Student accommodation is safe

4.66

1.31

The university has sufficient residential accommodation

4.66

1.41

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The library has a wide range of book and periodicals in my area of studies

4.57

1.51

The rooms in the student residential accommodation are comfortable

4.55

1.28

Adequate printer facilities are available

4.43

1.38

The campus computers are sufficient for the student population

4.31

1.41

The communal areas in each student residence are adequate for the number
of students

4.29

1.45

The university has plenty of sports facilities

4.20

1.36

The sport centre offers modern equipment

4.17

1.32

The university offers modern accommodation at affordable prices

3.94

1.33

The university provides adequate parking areas for students

3.70

1.48

My course is intellectually challenging

5.02

1.04

Staff react politely to students queries

4.71

1.19

It is easy to make friends on campus

4.70

1.23

The administrative staff are helpful

4.60

1.32

Lecturers stimulate critical analysis

4.56

1.19

There are clear and reasonable requirements for each module

4.55

1.10

Lecturers can be easily contacted individually

4.48

1.19

It is easy to get involved in campus social organisations

4.35

1.28

Lecturers have adequate time for consultation

4.28

1.22

Feedback from coursework is adequate

4.23

1.12

It is easy to interact with local students

3.62

1.50

The university takes the lead in research

4.85

1.04

A degree from this university improves my employment prospects

4.85

1.02

The university maintains links with international education networks

4.70

1.16

A degree from this university is well recognised internationally

4.69

1.14

The university is well recognised for the academic programmes

4.66

1.20

The university offers a high quality of teaching performance

4.57

1.17

The ranking of my school is high

4.57

1.32

Graduates from this university achieve considerable success in finding

excellent employment

4.45

1.20

A degree from this university has an excellent reputation in my home country

4.32

1.38

The university maintains excellent links with local industry

4.23

1.33

The university has contacts with international employers

4.18

1.29

The university has been extensively recommended by my friends in my home

country

3.92

1.37

Lecturers in my home country recommended this university to me

3.84

1.48

There are excellent links between my home country and this university
Table 2: Students views of the quality of service provided
7= strongly agree; 1= strongly disagree

3.45

1.30

Interactive quality

Corporative quality

A seven-point Likert scale was used for this purpose, and respondents were asked to
indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statements relating to their
experience. The instrument also collected data on satisfaction, value for money and
demographics. These are not reported here.

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The analysis included the preparation of descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations against
various independent variables, and exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation. An
overall Cronbach alpha coefficient of .875, results from more than 300 respondents, a
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy of more than .60 and the Bartletts test
results all gave support that the set of data was adequate for factor analysis, with a factor
loading of .35.

Results and discussion

The students views on the quality of service provided under the three dimensions are given
in Table 2. These, together with the reasons for enrolling in the particular programme
presented in Table 3, provide an indication of the elements of service quality that are of
importance to these international students. The reputation and content, including the English
language provision, of the programme are clearly important to the students in making their
decisions about where to study.
Reason

No (n=308)

Degree accepted internationally

184

English language spoken

152

Content of the course

142

Reputation of this university back home

103

Facilities

91

Entry requirement

63

Getting an offer of a place

62

Influence of friends/family

54

Know someone studying there

52

Degree not available at home

52

Scholarship award

42

Sponsors decision

19

Level of fees

13

Difficulty of getting into university at home

Table 3: Reasons for enrolling

11

The most important finding of the research to be reported here was that the factor analysis
did not entirely support the structure proposed by Lehtinen and Lehtinen. Indeed, as set out
in Table 4, four dimensions are identified, and of these, Factor 1 is by far the most important,
accounting for the largest proportion of the variance (34 per cent), with eigenvalues greater
than 3.00 (6.156). This factor includes a group of statements related to research, rigour and
reputation, and is labelled here recognition.
Factors
1

Factor 1: recognition
The ranking of my school is high (corporative quality)

.772

A degree from this university is well recognised

internationally (corporative quality)

.702

The university takes the lead in research (corporative quality)

.659

A degree from this university has an excellent reputation in

my home country (corporative quality)

.652

My course is intellectually challenging (interactive quality)

.609

Factor 2: quality of instruction and interaction with faculty

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Lecturers have adequate time for consultation (interactive
quality)

.765

Lecturers can be easily contacted individually (interactive

quality)

.758

There are clear and reasonable requirements for each

module (interactive quality)

.663

Lecturers stimulate critical analysis (interactive quality)

.611

Feedback from coursework is adequate (interactive quality)

.454

Factor 3: sufficiency of resources

The campus computers are sufficient for the student
population (physical quality)

.724

Adequate printer facilities are available (physical quality)

.689

The communal areas in each student residence are

adequate for the number of students (physical quality)

.657

The university has sufficient residential accommodation

(physical quality)

.642

Factor 4: quality of facilities

The university has plenty of sport facilities (physical quality)

.863

The sports centre has modern equipment (physical quality)

.802

The classrooms have up-to-date teaching support equipment

(physical quality)

.526

The gardens and open areas on campus are kept clean

(physical quality)

.483

Eigenvalue
6.156 1.527 1.375 1.272
Explained variance by factor (%)
34.199 8.481 7.640 7.069
Table 4: Service quality scale: factor loading structure
Extraction method: principle component analysis.
Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalisation. Rotation converged in five iterations

To some extent this reflects how the university positions itself as a demanding and
competitive body. The other three factors did not reach eigenvalues of 3.00, and the
percentage variance together only accounts for 23 per cent of the total. The second factor
roughly relates to Lehtinen and Lehtinens interactive quality and here is labelled quality of
instruction and interaction with faculty. The items here emphasise the importance of the
lecturer in his or her intrinsic role as a teacher, willing to guide, teach and motivate students.
The variables included in this factor also provide evidence of the responsibilities of the
lecturer towards the students in terms of providing clear instructions, accurate and punctual
feedback and private consultation. Factor 3 includes four items from physical quality, and
although they only explain 7.64 per cent of the common variance, all the items have high
loadings, ranging from .642 to .724. Interestingly, they all relate to the adequate provision of
services by the university and hence are labelled here sufficiency of resources. The last
factor, although composed of four items from physical quality, does not show a clear pattern
two of the items refer to sport facilities (both of which have high loadings), the modernity of
classroom facilities and cleanliness of the campus.
This recasting of the dimensions provides an interesting step in translating service quality
thinking into the arena of higher education. In particular, it emphasises the point that the
provision of services is not only about the actual facilities (classrooms, computers, etc) and
the ways in which they are delivered (by the teachers), both of which find correspondence in
any service; it also highlights the fact that there is another, in this case overriding, dimension
for students in the ways in which they judge their institution. This is the standing or
recognition of the university, which in itself is a combination of achievements often over many
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years in the wide range of activities covered by universities teaching, research, invention
and knowledge creation. In the case of this particular study, this may be partly explained by
the fact that the institution concerned has an outstanding and long-established reputation for
tourism and hospitality studies, and a significant proportion of the respondents were taking
these programmes. In the same way, ancient universities, some with histories over many
centuries, offer reputation as a key element in attracting students. This recognition
dimension, of course, also finds expression in other services and goods, but arguably its
explanatory strength for universities in distinguishing between institutions, particularly for
overseas students, is more powerful than in other areas.
It is difficult to generalise from this to all universities. Given the rapid expansion of the sector
in recent years, there has been little time for many institutions to have developed their
reputations. This may explain why in earlier studies (Gatfield et al., 1999; Tomkovick et al.,
1996) which have included reputation it has not consistently appeared as the most
important factor. Indeed, academic instruction has more typically explained most of the
variance (Gatfield, 2000; Elliot and Shin, 2002; Patterson et al., 1998). However, what it does
point to potentially is the sheer importance of reputation once it has been achieved and, as a
corollary, the imperative to maintain reputation. Against this background, league tables and
world rankings take on a crucial role and hence become a vital part of the development and
survival strategy for institutions in an increasingly competitive world. As international
recruitment and international competition in higher education increases, this is likely to figure
increasingly prominently in the strategies of universities.

Conclusion
Three important issues come out of this work in relation to the things that students value in
their university experience. First, in line with previous studies, the evaluation of higher
education includes a complex and diverse range of variables, from classroom experience to
library and computing provision, from social and sporting activities to international
recognition. Second, the work in measuring service quality provides a good starting point for
understanding the basic structure of the variables that students take into account in
evaluating their experience. And third, there is, at least for some universities, including the
one where the study took place, a fourth dimension related to reputation; in this case, a
reputation in hospitality and tourism may have influenced the results. This then points to a
key feature of higher education provision, which is that universities are not a uniform range of
institutions. They vary enormously by, for example, age, size, structure, specialism and
orientation, and any form of evaluation will be likely to reflect these differences. In this case,
it is reputation and recognition that has come through. In other universities and with other
student groups there may well be other dimensions in the variables.
This study was based on one institution and sought the views of the international,
postgraduate, full-fee-paying students who had already taken a decision about where to
study, and the configuration of the variables reflects this. Primarily, it has brought the
reputation of the institution into prominence; but it has also provided a further basis for
understanding the issues that international students value. Given the likely continued growth
in international student movements, there are key lessons here for institutions, not least in
the importance of developing and maintaining reputation. As already noted, in an
environment of globalisation, international competition and league tables, reputation is likely
to increase in importance.
Of course, given the sample of a particular group of students studying particular subjects at
one institution, there are some important limitations in the extent to which it is possible to
generalise the results. However, notwithstanding this weakness, both the approach and the
findings in terms of the key variables and dimensions provide pointers to approaches to
understanding the views of students and the ways in which this important group of students
view their experience.

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Pereda, Airey and Bennett (2007) Service Quality in Overseas Education: The Experience of
Overseas Students
There are clearly many further avenues for research in this area. A wider range of institutions
with different priorities, a wider range of subject areas and coverage of undergraduate and
domestic students would all provide further insights to the views of students about their
experiences and about the dimensions that they value. But perhaps most important for
tourism and hospitality specialists would be a specific focus on students studying these
subjects. While they are a significant cohort among the students included in the survey, and
this study can provide pointers, their number was not sufficient to draw final conclusions
about their particular characteristics, if any. This work remains to be done.

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